Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1885-1890, 1887-01-01

-. -
the vast changes that have taken, place il
every department of research during thu
last century, changes that have revolution
lied thought and methods, and marked Sc
much of the scientific literature of his day
as little more than %antiquated speculatiens
Smiths Wealth Of Nations still stands aS
the highest authority in political economy
and exerts an untold influence on the in
dustry and legislation of every civilized
state. From William Pitt to Gladstone its
declarations have been the ipse diet of
British statesmen, and to its principles
England today ascribes her industrial SUI
premacy of the world.
Adam Smith was born at Kirkcaldy,
Scotland on the 5 Of June, 1918. He was
educated first in the schools of his native
town and afterward in the universities of
Glasgow and Oxford. After a few years
spent in the preparation and delivery of a
ours OF lectures on rhetoric and bellies
letters, he was chosen professor OF logic
in the University of Glasgow, 1851. In
this position he exhibited the Independence
and originality which characterized him
in all his work, devoting but little time to
the traditional Formally Of a system that
bound up reason in the Spanish boots of
prescribed rules, but giving most of his at
tention to the more practical subject of
rhetoric.
The ability displayed by him oon led
to his appointment to the more important
chair of moral philosophy. In the curri-
culum of those days moral philosophy en-
braced the four branches of Natural Theo-
losy, Ethics, jurisprudence and Political
Economy. His work On two of these sub
jects Mr.. Smith published. and had his
Wealth of Nations never been written,
doubtless the Theory of Moral Sentiments
would have secured him a lasting name.
In addition to these he published some
pathological essays. But the work with
which his name has ever been associated
and on which his fame rests is his political
economy. To this subject which was then
far from being a science he had long Civ
en- special interest, and after the publica-
ton Of the Moral Sentiments, his whole
attention was given to the elaboration of
an economic system whose principles
should be universal and scientific. To do
this successfully required an extensive
practical knowledge of the industrial sys-
tens and methods of other countries.
With the limited means of communication
and difference Of knowledge of those days
this could be acquired only by travel and
personal observation. The opportunity
for this was furnished, when in 1860 Mr..
Smith was invited to accompany a young
was during that period of restless intellec-
tual activity in France which preceded the
Revolution, a period of boundless specula-
ton and theorizing, when everything ira
ditional religious, social and political
was subjected to unsparing criticisms.
The senseless doctrine of the old mercan-
tile school did not long survive the ordeal,
but o o succumbed to the highly scientific
theories Of the French Economists. With
the most noted of these economists Smith
was On the most intimate terms while in
France, and received from them many of
the opinions which appear in his work.
On his return from the Continent he re-
tired to his old home at Kirkcaldy with
the knowledge gained by his travels and
associations and after ten years of labor
published the work entitled IAN Inquiry
into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth
of Nations" the first complete system of
political economy ever written. In it he
avoids all the mistakes of the Mercantile
school which regarded money as the only
wealth, and that of the Economists who
considered natures products the sole
wealth, basing his system on what has ever
since been recognized as the fundamental
truth of political economy, viz, that hui
man labor is essentially the origin and
standard of all wealth; and that this labor
is most efficient when left to exert itself
according to its natural tendency untram-
meled by legislative interference. Though
work doubtless contains fallacies and
doctrines which subsequent thought and
experience have proven unsound, it still
stands as a classic Of English literature,
and later writer's from j. S. Mill to Henry
are compelled to pay tribute to the
Wealth of Nations as representing, if not
in all respects the true principles, at least
those which have the strongest hold oi the